The Lobster Quadrille
by TarnishedTeakettle
Summary: Gotham Bay is too cold and too toxic for humans to live in.


The last thing he remembers was being thrown into the icy waters of Gotham Bay by a Jabberwocky.

The first thing he knows when he wakes up is that he's rather wet, and desperate for a cup of tea. He's wet, but not submerged. And rather pleasantly warm on his left side, contrast to the cold, uncomfortable rocky floor beneath him. The madman tries to sit up- and he does so successfully, though not without his body protesting. And with a shock that makes him yelp and brings him completely awake, he realizes he's not wearing a shirt. He looks around, and sees his coat on fire. The fire that was warming him.

'Oh, no!' He wails internally- but at least it's not his hat- where's his hat? Where where where-

Oh, thank Carrol. There's his hat. The mermaid's playing with it. The mermaid? If he's hallucinating, this isn't Wonderland. But he must be. Unless he's dead. The problem, he muses, while trying simultaneously to figure out a rescue plan for his hat, is that neither reality, Wonderland, or any afterlife he's aware of have mermaids. He can cross off Wonderland. Not so much as a mention. Reality, life? It must be, the afterlife is supposed to be very nice- not hard and rocky. His nice coat certainly shouldn't be on fire. The whitecoats tried to push that reality was a wonderful thing, but in Wonderland his hat was his and he had tea and his bloody coat wasn't on bloody fire.

Jervis was beginning to get rather grumpy.

"That's mine."

He gets up, stumbles. The mermaid looks up with alarm, drops the hat in the water- god, he's going to have an aneurysm- and tries to make him sit down.

"No!" He stomps his foot and she frowns at him. "I want my hat!" He exclaims shrilly, pointing at it. She turns around, glances at it. His blood pressure spikes as the hat begins to sink. His anger turns to exasperation. "Please! I need it!" She seems to finally understand. Swims over, retrieves it, and brings it back.

She doesn't really understand what's so important about the… haht. But he's in an awful mood about it, that's for sure. A flash of annoyance goes through her. She didn't have to save him.

She watches as he flips it and jams it on his head. Freezing water pours over his face and he splutters. She has to hold back her laughter, even as her hard work getting him dry and warm is somewhat undone and he glares balefully at her though blonde, wet strands.

"It's not funny." He grumbles. "Now I'm cold again." He shivers for emphasis when she doesn't seem to understand. She points at the fire.

"Oh, mmm. My coat. Yes, thank you for burning it." Now what is he grumpy about? She understands extremely limited human language- hello, bye, food, drink, merpeople, sea, ship, her own name, and now haht, but she saved him and made him fire to keep him warm. Because she used his cloth? She rolled her eyes. Why did humans care so much about that cloth they wore anyway?

He began to rub at his ears and yawn. Then winced. She cocked her head, and he noticed and sighed somewhat fitfully. He drew his knees up to his chest and hugged them, with his back to the fire. "The pressure," he began, although if she didn't know what a hat was- actually, did she even understand him? He frowned, twisted his mouth. "Do. You. Speak. English?" Apparently not, if going by the look on her face. "Um… you… speak?" He mimed something coming out of his mouth. The mermaid chirped at him, made a sweet burbling noise, like a songbird and a creek combined. He smiled, a smile of someone who had literally no idea what was just spoken. It sounded like it could be language- a sort of rhythm, hard noises like consonants and light noises like vowels, but he honestly had no clue. He crawled over and begin writing in the mud. "Hello. My name is Jervis Tetch."

She peered at the writing. She understood what it was- she'd seen it before- but didn't know how to write or read English, either. It seemed rather silly to copy what he had written- so she wrote her name in mersymbol. "Harhreeut."

Jervis hasn't been a star pupil in college- or any schooling, for that matter, not with his daydreaming and rare hallucinations getting in the way of learning- but his mind was odder when he was in "real reality" than he was in his preferred reality, Wonderland. As it was, he recognized the symbols as some sort of nearly preserved but warped ancient Greek, and begin to decipher it with relative ease.

"Hah- haree- Harriet- Harriet?" Her eyes lit up and she clapped, like a parent delighted at her child's first words. He grinned foolishly, and bowed his head quickly in an acknowledgement of praise while his cheeks flushed slightly.

He wrote out in Greek, "I are Jervis-" His Greek wasn't brilliant- "Where are?" She peered at it, and recognized it as very very old mersymbols, borrowed from humans for its beauty long ago. She understood it rather well, though. "In a cave below the waters, Jervis." Then she spelled, "I'm sorry I burned your cloth and dropped your haht in the waters."

Jervis sighed again. "It good. I like fire now. I am good we are talk, yes?"

She wiped the mud over for more room. "Yes. Why do you care about your cloth? Easier to swim without, no?" And flicked water up with her scarlet tail for emphasis. He looked her in the eyes and made a strangled sound while his face and ears burned bright red.

She vaguely knew what some complicated human emotions looked like- sometimes, when she was young and daring, she'd swim under the pier and human-watch. She'd seen some humans slowly turn similar colors after being in the sun too long, but this was too onset, and only occurred in his head. And they didn't choke. Anger? He wasn't growling or yelling. Shame? Yes, that sounded about right. She felt a bit guilty. She hadn't meant to make him feel shame.

She reached a outstretched hand towards him in a gesture of apology, but all he did was scoot backwards.

He was suddenly aware of his own relatively scarce clothing. To most people, pants and a shirt was plenty to cover up with, but Jervis really wasn't accustomed to being without his thick overcoat and its' long sleeves. Along with the hat, it provided a great sense of security.

Plus, gentleman as he was, he felt it wasn't proper etiquette to be near a lady when his white undershirt hadn't quite dried off yet, showing his torso. And, he couldn't bear to bring himself to be within 10 feet of her own… "undress-ed-ness."

What was he supposed to do? He supposed it would be offensive to ask her to put something on. One would be foolish to ask the Red Queen to calm her temper or the Duchess to stop throwing kitchenware; it would be rather similar, wouldn't it?

In the midst of his hemming and hawing, Harriet was getting rather bored, and not feeling so guilty anymore- she didn't feel like she done anything wrong- and so began doodling in the sand. She drew a crab, a collection of shells, and an oyster. About five minutes had passed when she noticed that Jervis had suddenly began mumbling something under his breath, almost to the tune of a song. She looked up at him. His redness had faded, and he had a dreamy expression on his face, eyes half-lidded and focused on nothing, grin plastered on his face for no particular occasion.

"Now what?" Harriet thought, exasperated.

This man was a mess, she decided- going from close to fury, to content, to abashed, and finally to off in the clouds. Were all humans like this? How could any of them keep up with each other? Merpeople, for the most part, were a stoic lot. She was considered a bit odd for her unwavering curiosity about humans. No other merperson would dare come near the surface, let alone save a human. She'd been away from her people for many years, now.

This human was fascinating, yet frustrating all at the same time.

He scooted back up to her, shame all but forgotten. He peered at the drawing of the oyster- then drew three more.

"(4) young fish hurried up, eager for the food." He wrote. Mostly for education, but also slightly out of spite at his rapidly changing behavior- for she couldn't understand that this was mental illness, not having anything comparable in merfolk- she changed his "4" to "four" and his "fish" to "oysters."

He nodded in thanks, and then continued writing, and her editing. Eventually, they stopped with ""a loaf of bread," the Walrus said, "Is what we chiefly need: pepper and vinegar besides are very good indeed."" He paused, underlined this, and then almost continued writing when Harriet stopped him and wrote, "You could have just written that you were hungry."

"What did they live on?"

"I can catch you some fish, or-"

Jervis suddenly wiped the dirt, and started again- "They couldn't have done that, you know, they'd have been ill."

"That was rude. I was still writing." He scowled at this, pouting much like a grumpy child, and crossed his arms and legs.

"You should learn not to make personal remarks. It's very rude."

'F*cks sake,' Harriet thought. He was much more manageable asleep. "I'm going hunting. Do you want to eat or not?"

"Come, we will have some fun now!"

"I'll take that as a yes." She sighed, grabbed her empty seaweed fishing bag from beside her tail fin, and waved him a short goodbye, leaving his insane babbling for the comforting, freezing, deeper darkness of Gotham Bay.

Consistent writing style? Decent plot? 3D original characters? Never heard of 'em

(Betas/constructive critics pls interact)


End file.
